The Eldest Daughter of the Sichuan Tang Clan Protects Her Family

The Red Blood Hall Lord clicked his tongue.
“Tut-tut, our hound has already been steeped in the Central Plains’ airs. When did you pick up benevolence and righteousness?”
Hae-rak knit his fine eyes as if wronged.
“So you do recognize the hardship. Are you saying I spent three years with my ears rotting from every manner of benevolence and righteousness I’d never hear in my lifetime? After suffering like a dog, how could you snatch away a dog’s bowl before it’s even finished its meal? My master is a person unqualified to keep a dog.”
Assessment.
The Red Blood Hall Lord flung his own subordinate’s body aside. Because his claws were still buried in the chest, the corpse was torn apart gruesomely.
Hae-rak exaggeratedly hunched his shoulders and wiped the blood splashed on his face with the cloth on the table.
“I’m afraid to think I might end up with a superior like you. I thought he was someone you cherished, but you split him clean in two.”
“Why did you have Cheol-myeon killed?”
“…What are you babbling about? You killed him and now you’re trying to pin it on me?”
“Was there any need to throw Cheol-myeon at me?”
“Mm? Then should I have offered up my own chest? Ah, Pyowol, didn’t I just say it? This is a borrowed outfit—I have to return it clean.”
Ignoring Hae-rak’s wordplay, the Red Blood Hall Lord’s lips curved.
“Is this revenge for killing your subordinate?”
“My subordinate was killed? When?”
Hae-rak asked back in feigned surprise. Then, as if something dawned on him, he lifted the human-skin mask resting on the desk.
“…This fellow?”
When the Red Blood Hall Lord answered with silence, Hae-rak set the mask back down and let out a sigh.
“You still don’t get it.”
Hae-rak chuckled, needling him.
“If he were my subordinate, he wouldn’t have fallen to the likes of you.”
“Ha-ha, the Central Plains is indeed a peaceful land. Judging by how limp your provocation is.”
“It’s not provocation. It’s fact. Just as it’s nigh impossible for a nonbeliever to become a Hall Lord, it’s just as near-impossible for a nonbeliever to enter the Crimson Blood Hall.”
“Sure, sure. Ah—how is the Vice Unit Leader?”
The Red Blood Hall Lord spoke the Crimson Blood Hall’s Vice Unit Leader’s name.
Back when they lived on the Great Desert, the Vice Unit Leader had nearly lost his life to the Red Blood Hall Lord but, by luck, got away with only one arm gone.
The Red and Blue Blood Halls and the Crimson Blood Hall were equal in military force, yet the Crimson Blood Hall was always treated a tier lower. The Blood Demon had openly named them the kennels, the pack of hunting dogs; it was only natural. Whenever bored, the Red- and Blue-blooded bastards would cripple or take the lives of the Crimson Blood Hall’s cultists to cement their own pecking order.
The Red Blood Hall Lord spoke with a laugh.
“What’s to fear of a beast, however fierce, when it’s on a leash? A cur that can’t even bite off a scrap of its master’s flesh.”
At those words Hae-rak’s eyes lifted. In the gold-turned pupils, the Red Blood Hall Lord’s smiling face was reflected.
“Go on then, bark your fill. It’s been a while—let me give you some training.”
Hae-rak’s mouth softened into a curve.
“Hubei is where the Martial Alliance headquarters sits. I spent years personally scrubbing off the Blood Cult’s traces there; yet because of the Oseoksan you sent, I’ve become a little inconvenienced.”
In a low voice, Hae-rak made a proposal.
“I can’t grant you a clean death, so try offering me just one way for you to go on living dirty.”
The Red Blood Hall Lord burst out laughing.
“Ha-ha! Told to bark, and you bark so hard—you were born a dog. That’s why the Blood Demon changed the plan and sent you into the Central Plains first. To tidy up the path a man must walk so it wouldn’t be dangerous. Our Hae-rak listens so well and does his °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° work so well, how could the Blood Demon not be too fond to kill you.”
Though he spoke as gently as one coddling a pet, the claws of his right hand were reddening shade by shade. The well-honed hand looked ready to strike at any moment.
The Red Blood Hall Lord smiled, stretching his lips.
“One—unlike that person, I’m different. Your luck is truly foul.”

Luck.
At that word, a smile spread at Hae-rak’s lips. It was because the face of someone amusing came to mind.
He suddenly wondered what expressions these fellows would wear—when they learned he had found the way to sever the leash.
Just then, the Red Blood Hall Lord, eyes blazing scarlet, lunged.
“I told you not to smile so insolently before me.”
Boom. Clang. Boom.
In an instant, dozens of exchanges flashed by.
The Red Blood Hall Lord’s claw methods were blood arts taught to him directly by the Blood Demon.
Yet for some reason, his claws could not touch the Crimson Blood Hall Lord who had never even once received direct instruction in the blood arts. Like the talons of a raptor, however sharp, cannot seize the sun, whenever he tried to grasp and rend, only heat remained in his palm.
“Damn it.”
The Red Blood Hall Lord cursed. The moment he lost his composure, his vision went pitch-black.
“Urk!”
With a death-cry-like grunt, he jerked his body far back. He had nearly had his face seized by that dog of a man. Though only brushed for an instant, his cornea melted and his sight went dim.
He spread his sensing to its limits. He meant to hold a defensive posture until his sight returned, but the heat surged right up to his nose.
“Grk!”
With no time to evade, his throat was caught. A burrowing firefiend surged as if burning his windpipe.
But only for a moment.
Tack.
Like a wave receding, the heat drew away. Hae-rak had pulled his body back.
Frowning between the brows, Hae-rak turned his head aside. He spat the blood pooled in his mouth.
“Ptuh.”
Black blood spattered onto the floor. Seeing worms writhing in the blood made Hae-rak’s jaw muscles bunch hard.
The Red Blood Hall Lord began to laugh loudly.
“Well now, that is truly marvelous.”
He lifted his hand as if boasting. His wide sleeve slid down with a rustle, revealing the bracelet coiled at his wrist. It was strung with large red jade beads like a rosary.
“A divine object bestowed by the Blood Demon. Since you’re not blind, you can see it.”
The Blood Demon’s Will—beads that contained the Blood Demon’s blood.
Shaking his arm, the man shouted in delight.
“The Blood Demon himself set the order between you and me. So don’t defy his intent and die nicely. Of course—”
The Red Blood Hall Lord’s mouth split long as he smirked.
“If you submit to me, I am inclined to let you live.”
Hae-rak clicked his tongue as he wiped the corner of his lips with his long robe sleeve.
“So the old man still thinks you above me. He must be at the end of his rope. Even senility should have its limits.”
“Shut up!”
The Red Blood Hall Lord roared.
At last his sight returned.
In his now-clear vision was the unbeliever’s face. Far from cowed, he was smiling as he wiped the blood from his lips.
The very instant his sight fully came back, the Red Blood Hall Lord sprang at Hae-rak. Yet the man wasn’t there. The moment he registered the absence, blood sprayed before his eyes.
With searing heat came a sharp bursting sound that tickled his ear.
His gaze dropped to where the sound had come from.
The Blood Demon’s Will lay fallen on the floor.
Crunch.
Watching the bead shatter to pieces beneath a black shoe, the Red Blood Hall Lord let out a shriek.
“Aaaargh!”
He hurled himself toward the divine object. He paid no mind to his own arm sprawled beside the bead.
But Hae-rak, as if toying with him, stepped and crushed the rest of the divine beads one by one.
Crack. Crunch.
“N-no! No!”
“How is it, seeing your beloved old man’s blood mixed with yours? Ugh, I feel unwell. What is this stench—so vile.”
Hae-rak waved a hand right before his nose.
To the unhinged Red Blood Hall Lord, such gestures didn’t even enter his eyes. With a stupefied face he picked up the fragments of the divine object scattered on the floor, and Hae-rak crouched beside him.
“Pyowol.”
Hae-rak patted the Red Blood Hall Lord’s shoulder as though consoling a dazed man.
“What do you think would happen if I personally brought this to the old man?”
Hae-rak was holding the Red Blood Hall Lord’s severed arm. The Red Blood Hall Lord’s face turned ashen.
“Will he shout, ‘How dare you torment my cherished foot-wiper! Unforgivable!’ and try to kill me? Or will he say, ‘To have handed my Will to such a weakling—how disgraceful. I must kill him with my own hands,’ and try to kill you?”
Perhaps he knew the answer himself; the Red Blood Hall Lord could not open his mouth.
Hae-rak clicked his tongue.
“Pyowol, unlike you, I loathe the old man’s attention. I do not wish to draw it.”
In truth, it was that he must not draw it.
At least for now. Not until he severed this ancient bondage.
“Depending on how you handle this, it can remain a secret between you and me that the old man will never know, or it can become the unbeliever’s deed recorded in the cult’s history.”
Hae-rak used the Red Blood Hall Lord’s own hand to brush back his disheveled hair.
“Well? What will you do?”
He knew the unbelievers’ bodies were different. A physique that gnawed away life to drive its abilities—he’d heard that as life approached its end, that power exploded. Thus, with time, the believers were naturally overwhelmed by the unbelievers.
It was why the Red and Blue Blood Halls so diligently trampled the Crimson Blood Hall to break their spirit.
“Not yet thirty, and already to this degree?”
Thus the Red Blood Hall Lord was unsettled.
“I’d heard they peak around the age of forty—doesn’t this bastard still have ten more years to grow?”
The Blood Demon could handle the madman before him with ease, but even after receiving the Blood Demon’s Will, he himself could not hold out for even a moment.
Anew, the Red Blood Hall Lord felt the yawning gulf between the Blood Demon and himself. And the fact that that madman stood somewhere between them made his head swim.
Now the Red Blood Hall Lord had no choice. Not because he feared death. What terrified him was revealing to the cult that an unbeliever stood above a believer.
The Blood Demon would esteem more highly the one closer to him than any piety. It was obvious he would seek to take this bastard in.
Knowing how dangerous that would be for that person, the Red Blood Hall Lord could not report this to the cult.
Bang.
He slammed his forehead into the blood-soaked floor.
“I will do anything.”
“I will.”
“……”
He had barely set his jaw in resolve and the bastard was already sneering. The Red Blood Hall Lord bit his tongue and swallowed blood.
As the silence dragged on, Hae-rak knit his brow.
“What? You said you’d do anything—was that an empty boast?”
“…I will do anything.”
At last a properly respectful answer came out. Hae-rak used the Red Blood Hall Lord’s hand to pat his back.
“Good, good. By the way, there’s one thing I’m curious about.”
As if the Red Blood Hall Lord had never even been a problem to begin with, he withdrew his interest from him.
And he asked the thing that had kept nagging some corner of his mind.
“Why did you bring Oseoksan?”